Missionaries And

Traders

Letter to the Editor The average missionary’s (and spurious writer’s) old stock yarn about the evil behaviour of the “unscrupulous, gin-sodden, kanaka-swindling, beach-combing trader” received something of a jolt recently, when one hard-baked old missionary retired to England after twenty odd years’ service in the “sorrowful Solomons.” He told his con gregation that “he had always received the most generous help, in carrying out his work, from traders”!

Not a single word of the usual ahuse did he utter; and, needless to say, traders generally are so tickled about it that they are going around purring in their astonishment.

But, imagine the shower of condemnation he must have pulled down upon his own head from those concerned in the financing of missions! A sample of it might read something like this:— “What on earth do you mean, Gravestones? . You know perfectly well how hard it is to raise funds in these awful times, and there you go and ‘body line’ our very best theory in extracting lucre from our all too tardy donors! Behave yourself, man!”

It is, indeed, time that these worn-out lies about the unfortunate trader were laid aside. Few people realise to what extent his present bankrupt condition, and unemployment generally, are due to these spurious yarns, and how they have influenced the inexperienced official mind! Indeed, it is safe to say that the encouragement of Chinese traders, with its attendant evil of rendering British manu factured goods obsolete, is very largely due to the fiction of some missionaries.

It is understandable that in pre-government days, hard-case things wene done. There was no government to appeal to, and drastic circumstances called for drastic measures to keep personal skins intact; so it was a matter of natural sequence that only men who had not much use for the words “Beg pardon” gravitated to these localities.

Anyhow, even they served their turns in opening up the British Empire, so let us draw a veil over their doings and cease to perpetuate mischie vous falsehoods about their very tame successors.

And—three cheers for “Gravestones!”. I am, etc.,

Solomonoo.

15 /3/1934.

EDITORIAL NOTE.—During four years of active editorship we have not heard one malignant word uttered by missionaries against traders. But old ideas die hard. What “Solomonoo” says about Chinese traders is true enough, though. There does seem to be a theory that the presence of Chinese traders in the Solomons is a necessary safeguard against exploitation of natives by European traders.